


Untitled

by malariamonsters



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-03-26 16:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3857554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malariamonsters/pseuds/malariamonsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of random scenes originally posted on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. an afternoon after visiting his father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A writing exercise to help me get into Barry's head. Wrote this in March '15 on my tumblr.

The CC17 Line was the sole bus that made a stop at the Central City Correctional Facility, which lay on the outskirts of the city limits, just after the highway started. When he was able to catch a ride from Iris it took him forty-five minutes to get to the prison from home. On the bus it took him an hour and a half. It was a special line, and so the bus only came by every three hours on weekdays, and didn’t run at all on weekends. It took a very long time and a lot of coordination to be able to spend a few minutes with his father.

In the first years after his mother’s murder, after his father had been imprisoned, Barry had had to learn how distract himself when he missed his parents—when he wanted a kiss from his mother, or a hug from his father, but knew he could not have either. Sometimes as he waited for the bus that feeling of loss came back to him, but he’d had to deal with it for over seven years, now, and so he knew how to temper himself, how to exercise a restraint on his longing so as to temper the pain.

One evening, after a visit to his father where he’d promised him again that he would prove his innocence and his father had replied with a rueful smile and words that stung though they were meant to soothe, Barry came back home to find the house empty. He went to the kitchen, hooking his backpack on a chair, and checked the notepad they kept on the counter next to the fridge. In Joe’s large scrawl he read  _Be home around 10 tonight. Casserole in the fridge—heat at 350º for 50 mins. (Iris eat your dinner—DO NOT JUST HAVE DESSERT.)_ Barry smiled, despite the hollowness that filled him every time he left his father, and opened the fridge to get dinner ready. After putting the casserole in the oven, he poured himself a glass of orange juice and padded his way to the living room.

Iris came in just a few minutes after he’d turned on the tv. He heard the jingle of her keys and looked over his shoulder to watch her come in. Even before she closed the door she dropped her bag to the floor and let out a groan. She toed her shoes off, shrugged off her jacket, and made her way over to the couch. She gave him a smile and said, “Hey, Bear,” as she settled down in the corner opposite from him. He watched as she pulled her hair out of it’s bushy ponytail, sliding the band over her wrist and then using her fingers to loosen her thick curls. The entire time she was saying, “I’m so tired. I stayed after today to arrange the volunteer work everyone in my group’s supposed to be doing for PoliSci, and Brendan Miller kept trying to say that cleaning his own drive way counted. Like, I’m sorry you don’t understand the concept of doing chores, but I’m not gonna let that eat into my grade.” When she was finished she let out a sigh and pouted, then crossed her right ankle over her left knee so she could massage it.

“You weren’t in school today,” she said, turning to him.

“No,” he answered her simply.

“Just no?” she asked, and he shrugged in response, took some gulps of his orange juice.

It had been a while since Barry had started to hold himself back from touching her. He’d realized he wanted a brush of her hand to be a caress, and a kiss on the cheek to be a kiss on the lips, and, worried he’d do something to expose himself, something inappropriate like tell her how pretty she looked with her hair like that, he’d kept himself from taking her hand, from holding her gaze when she caught him staring, from hugging her just because he wanted to. But now he thought of the words his father had said. “You don’t have to try so hard, Barry,” and that placating smile he’d never had before he’d gone to prison. He moved off the couch and settled crosslegged on the floor in front of her, reached out to take both her feet, laid them in his lap. He didn’t look at her, and she didn’t say anything. He inched her socks off, rubbed at the ridged impression they left around her ankles. He took one foot, placed her heel in the middle of his palm, and used his other hand to rotate her ankle, first to the right, then to the left.

“Does that feel better?” he asked her, still not looking up.

“Yes.” Her voice was quiet. “Thank you.”

He took her other foot, traced a finger from her heel to her middle toe.

“You’re not ticklish here,” he said.

“You already know that, Bear.”

Iris pulled her foot from his hand.  She rearranged herself so that her legs were folded beneath her. “Barry, are you ok?” she said.

He sighed, rubbed his hands over his face and squeezed his eyes shut. Finally, he looked up at her. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Iris didn’t say anything for a long time. She tilted her head to the side as she contemplated him, the way she did whenever she had something to say but kept herself from saying it. Barry held her gaze. He didn’t know if he wanted her to ask him again, or if he wanted her to let it go. She looked away from him, and he figured she would give him an out, wouldn’t make him tell her the way she usually did.


	2. iris and her silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reaction to 1.10, "Revenge of the Rogues."

Iris could never bring herself to say “I don’t love you” to him. There were no qualifiers she could use to make those words somehow true–not “like that,” not “I’m sorry,” not “the way you want me to.” If she ever uttered them they would hurt her as much as they could hurt him, and they would give a shape and animation to a vastness in her she hadn’t yet examined, a territory she hadn’t yet named for herself. So what answer could she give him? Had he even posed a question? All she had to offer were abandoned gestures of familiarity that had once come as easy to her as calling his name–an “I miss you, Barry,” turned into a sigh; a tight-lipped smile where a hug should have been; touches all balled up in her fists lest they turn to caresses without her knowing why–and silence. She wrapped silence around her shoulders and hoped it was enough to protect her from her own confusion. She lay it across the space that had emerged between them after he’d said those words to her and hoped it was thick enough to bear both their weight. She chose silence then, when she’d never chosen it before, because now if she cried out she didn’t know if she’d have her best friend to offer some kind of solace.


	3. wally + mom

Joe’s house–he still called it that in his head–Joe’s house had a porch that encircled it. The first time he got drunk with Iris he made a bumbling effort at telling her what meeting her was like, what she was like. He said something about the way that porch went around the entire house, like a pair of arms, at once inviting and protecting. Iris must have misunderstood him, she’d ended up giving him a really long hug, but it was a happy mistake. 

He didn’t have a porch at home. He lived on the ground floor apartment with his mom. In their kitchen they had a window overlooking the backyard they shared with the rest of the tenants. On Sunday mornings, in the quiet left behind by the church goers off to worship, he’d made that yard his. He’d whooped and hollered, climbed up the trees and jumped off with flailing limbs. He’d opened his arms wide and turned his face up to the sky and spun round and round, pretending he was holding up the entire thing. His mom always stayed inside, in the kitchen right behind the sink. He could always see her profile there, framed by the window and fuzzed by the screen, knew once he stopped spinning and stood still for the dizziness to pass, she’d be right there, watching him. She made sure he didn’t climb too high, she was always scared of his fall, but she always told him “Don’t be scared of the world, baby. I was scared of the world once, but now I know it’s not too big for me.” Around noon, when the morning services were over, she’d call out “Wally, baby,” and he’d answer “Yes, Mamma!” and run back inside to her embrace.


	4. mornings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A birthday present for sendtherain.

Iris had always hated mornings. They came too soon, demanded too much, and passed much too quickly–the only good thing about them was the food. 

She’d never been a morning person, but if all mornings could be like this, with hazy-gray dawn light filtering through her curtains and casting everything in soft shadow, and her comforter all fluffy and gentle, and her favorite person in the world lying right next to her, all warm and deliciously long limbed with his arms around her, then maybe mornings wouldn’t be so bad. 

Barry had his face smushed into one of her pillows, his hair a total mess, which was kind of how he always was–entirely too adorable than he had any right to be. They’d fallen asleep together the night before, after teasing and kisses and whispered urgings and more, with their legs tangled in her sheets and Barry’s heart beating lightning quick under her palm. He looked peaceful now, and Iris wanted to trace his eyebrows and kiss him all over, to let him know how precious he was to her. Looking at him, she felt her heart fill with something that left her elated, and she realized she had absolutely no fear in her. She was so full of Barry, so full of her love for him, that she didn’t have any space left for things that would make her cower.

She’d been afraid once, they’d both been, that things would change if they ever did this, if they ever tried to be what they felt in the moments they shared when they looked at each other and found some other thing lying beside their friendship. And things had changed–Iris found she was discovering entirely new things to love about Barry. Like mornings–she loved how he stretched against her when he woke up, she loved how silly he would be by holding on to her and refusing to let her get out of bed even after her alarm had gone off, she loved the way he watched her as she got dressed, wide eyed and unabashed, as though he was making up for all the times he’d had to duck his head to keep her from seeing how he wanted her. And there were entirely new ways of loving him, too. By slipping her hand into his pocket if she was cold, by pulling the sheets back for him when he came to bed late after a night of superhero crime fighting. By telling him she loved him. And Barry loved her in new ways, too. She’d never known before what it was to have someone be so unguarded with her, to have them trust her so completely. 

So that morning, when Barry screwed his eyes shut against the light and pulled her closer so he could bury his head against her chest, when he half-kissed, half-mumbled, half-yawned a question about if she wanted him to speed over to her favorite bakery to get some chocolate croissants before she left for work, she stroked his hair and called him her pet name for him. 

“Baby,” she said, and he looked up at her, brow furrowed and eyes questioning because he knew she only ever called him that in their smallest, quietest moments. She smiled at him. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Anything, Iris.”

“You’re my favorite person.”

He grinned up at her, kissed her neck and told her, “You know, Ms. West, I don’t think that’s a secret.”

“No?”

“Mm-mm.” He was too busy pushing the covers away and her nightshirt up, kissing his way down her collar bone and lower, to answer her properly.

“Then can I tell you something else?”

He’d made his way down to her thighs, looked up at her from his place there to flash her a ridiculous grin and said, “Always.”

“I think I want to be called Mrs. West-Allen.” 

Barry’s grin fell right off his face. His mouth fell open.

“As in…Iris…West-Allen?” he asked. His voice squeaked at the end.

“Mm-hmm,” Iris said, triumphant.

“I–I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you. Did you just propose to me right before I went down on you?”

“Mm-hmm,” Iris answered, and she started giggling.

“Oh really?” Barry said, “Oh really?” and he dipped his head and then Iris stopped giggling all together.

It was another thing for her to add to her list of great things about mornings: how Barry said yes to a marriage proposal.


	5. a gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reaction to 2.17, "Flash Back."

He wanted to hold her to make her feel better. But he knew better than to be reckless with her now. He’d learned his lesson. _Be delicate, be gentle, don’t scare her with how much or how long._  So instead of giving her a gift of himself, he gave her something else, something perhaps she couldn’t get on her own. He listened to her, her grief and her doubt, and he went back in time and got her certainty. He let Eddie say the words he wanted to say: “You deserve to be loved just as you deserve to be happy. And you shouldn’t be scared to be happy, for fear it’ll mean what you had with him was any less.” 

He remembered thinking Eddie was too easily confident, too blond, and too comfortable in believing he was universally liked. But he remembered, too, the last words Eddie had said. “I just wanted to be your hero, Iris.” Even before Eddie had died, he’d found he could never begrudge anyone who loved her. 

He’d give her the space to be alone with what she felt. He wouldn’t wipe her tears away or kiss her. But when he was away from her and working on something that demanded all his focus, he’d stop anything, or everything–he’d think of her and make sure to bring her something that would make her smile.


	6. iris x flash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reaction to 1.21, "Grodd Lives."

“Who do you want to be to me?”  
  
He shrugged at her, shook his head and swallowed. She thought for a moment that maybe he didn’t know how to answer her, but no, she realized, that wasn’t it. He was keeping it from her, still and again. Another lie. Another thing he wouldn’t let her know.   
  
When had they become this? When had her best friend become someone who lied to her, someone who drew a circle while he stood outside it, and told her that was the only place she could be? 

In that moment Iris could have walked away and left him with his silence. But she chose the anger she felt—that he would make her feel so stupid and so useless, could think that he had any right to decide where she should be—over her hurt that he could parcel himself out so easily to her when she’d always given him all of her. She chose her anger over her quaking fear that this was his answer to the “no” she’d never uttered, and she told him, “Answer me, Barry.”  
  
He shook his head again, looked away from her. His voice was low, she almost didn’t hear him when he said, “I just want to be yours, Iris.”


	7. iris x flash (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That Iris x Flash shit I like.

Some mornings Iris wakes up when the sky is still a white-grey, before the sun has kissed the chill out the air to keep it from raising goosebumps on her skin. She’ll turn in bed and stretch against the warmth of her favorite person. She’ll kiss his forehead a secret “Good morning,” smile at the contentment of his sleeping face, and only let herself be distracted by her happiness for a few heartbeats before wiggling from his loose-limbed embrace.

On those mornings Iris goes for a jog. She pulls her hair in a ponytail, pulls on her favorite sneakers, does a few jumping jacks before she stretches. She likes running eastward, so she can see the sun as it rises, the way it makes shadows creep back across the bridges and libraries and gardens of her city. Iris always has a sense of anticipation when she jogs, even though she takes familiar routes and rarely changes her pace. Sometimes what she waits for takes five minutes, sometimes it takes till she’s almost made her way back home—

But it always comes, and whether early or late it’s somehow always on time. She never sees him, he’s so impossibly fast, but she always feels him. It’s not just the whoosh of his body passing by and the way it makes cars and hanging plants wobble, it’s the tingling she feels in certain places in her body—her fingers, her lips, under her skin. On mornings when she goes for a run Barry runs, too. He runs around her, around the city, loops and loops, wide and then smaller and smaller towards her, and sometimes in the distance she’ll be able to make out his red and gold flashing, which is uniquely his wether or not he wears a suit and mask.

On mornings when she goes for a run, Barry speeds by Iris once, twice, then stops—in that fraction of a moment he and Iris have a perfect understanding of time: nothing rushes by and nothing stands still. In that fraction of a moment he gives Iris a kiss on her cheek and flashes her a smile wide and bright and mischievous, a reflection of what she brings out in him.

Iris knows this Barry, who loves to run and the feel of power in his limbs. She loves him. She takes his greeting gladly, even though he’s off again so fast she almost loses her breath, and keeps her pace, waiting, waiting.

When Barry comes back to her he’s facing her, jogging backwards.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

“You need to stop sneaking out of bed.”

“You need to start waking up on time.”

“You’re the one keeping me up at all times of the night.”

“Excuse me!” she cries, but all he does is give her a grin, impish as ever, and fall in step beside her.

Iris knows how to explain that the Flash can run faster than the speed of light, but she likes the secret she has, that on mornings when she heads out alone she comes back with Barry next to her, keeping pace with her even though he can go so much faster, and reaching the door of their home together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to read a fic where Iris goes jogging and Barry keeps pace with her, so I wrote it. 
> 
> tages: otp: her favorite person, otp: mpd superhero


	8. Prompt: Angst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Iris has nightmares after seeing Barry killed.

This is what Iris knows: reality is worse than anything her mind can come up with to grip her round the throat. She can wake from a nightmare, even if what she’s met with when she opens her eyes is darkness and the slick of her sweat between her fingers and on her upper lip. She must have been screaming in her sleep–her throat is raw and even breathing hurts.

She’s seen Barry die before. She is almost as familiar with his death as she is with his smile. When he was eleven he’d come to her with shaking hands and pleading voice, unable to accept a world that told him what he’d seen was a lie. That had been a death. She’s seen him on a hospital bed, unmoving save for the moments when he seized, when his body was visited with a violence that seemed too much for him to take. She’d counted them on her fingers; seven times in nine months. She’d wanted to hold him tight, to maybe calm him, but they hadn’t let her touch him, and so she’d run away instead. But he’d woken up. He’d come back to her. And in those following days she’d tallied up each instance of his pain–each bruise, each broken rib, each time he only said her name faintly because anything else would hurt too much. She counted them up and held onto them as proof to show that he’d paid his dues, and so his life was something he could keep. Was that part of the magic of him, to die in so many ways, and so many times? He kept finding new ways to make himself vulnerable, ways she didn’t know how to fight, how to protect him from.

This death is different. This death is her inheritance–she flounced her desire in the face of her fear, had opened her mouth to tell him she wanted him, wanted everything he wanted to give her, and in return every trace of him had been burned from existence. It wasn’t his answer to her, but it was the answer the world had given her. 

A dream she can escape. Iris wakes and calls his name–“Barry, Barry, Bare”–a refrain familiar to her as the steady pulse of her heart, but she doesn’t get the answer of his warm hand on her back, his arms pulling her close. All she has is empty air to dry the sweat on her skin and to remind her that this silence is what she has now, and all that stretches before her.


	9. Prompt: Domesticity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: West-Allen Family Feels — Iris and Barry having an adorable moment with their new babies?

Don and Dawn were so small and so delicate. Barry had never known that anything in the world could be so tiny and so fragile, could need him so much. When he looked at his children, with their curled fists and their scrunched up faces, he felt a tenderness that undid him. He was theirs in a way he had never been to anyone before. They were only a few months old. All they could do was wail and giggle and gurgle, but already he knew their voices, knew that when Dawn was upset he just had to scratch a finger down her little foot to make her happy again, and when Don was tired he kicked and shook his hands in the air. They already had distinct personalities. Dawn had wide eyes, big and brown like Iris’s and Joe’s, that she was always casting around her, as if she was looking for the next thing that would delight her, while Don was content to snuggle in the crook of Iris’s arm and yawn around his pacifier. They were warm and soft and reminded Barry how much he wanted his life, this life. They made him cautious, they made him happy. They were impossible, they were _impossible_ , and they were his.

Barry remembered what Iris had told him once, that they neither of them had had someone who was perfect for them. Barry had always relished the chance to be that for her—perfect—but now he could be that for his kids, too. He was scared. Being a father, it wasn’t something he could fuck up. But he had the best memories of his own father, and he had Joe to guide him, and he had Iris right there beside him. When they’d found out she was pregnant, they’d both been scared. “Barry,” she’d said, “you can run on water. And I can drink Linda _and_ my dad under the table. We can do this.” And they’d clasped their hands together and done it. He’d still made her promise to tell him if she ever felt hurt, and when her belly had grown big and round he’d kissed it, and the stretch marks that formed on it too.

One late night Barry heard Dawn crying. He made to get out of bed, felt Iris squeeze his arm. She kissed his forehead, her sign letting him know that she had it. From across the room Barry heard Iris pick Dawn up, and in the muted tones of the night he saw her rock her gently from side to side, bending her knees with it. “Sshhh,” Iris told her, and Dawn quieted down. Then, after a long moment, “You’re not sleepy anymore?” Iris was whispering. “Ok, it’s ok. I’ll tell you a story, all right? It’s a story your daddy loved a lot when he was little, and I like it now, too.”

Iris began, “Once there was a little dinosaur called a Maiasaur who lived with his mother,” and Barry smiled. He knew how this story went, how his and Iris’s went, too, and they were both good.


End file.
